ABSTRACT
The group dynamics approach stems from that branch of academic psychology which had its origin in the gestalt movement and at present is best represented by field theory. The major theoretician of field theory, Kurt Lewin, believed his formulations to be in opposition to those of psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis originally grew out of the intensive clinical study of individuals and their behavioral aberrations. It began as a theory of mental illness, but soon focused on the developmental history of behaviors, including their transformations, apparent disappearances, and later reappearances. As such they behave in matters relating to the group as interdependent members of the group, subject to the psychological laws governing the expenditure of energies within the group and to the group's aims and goals. It is useful to describe the psychological elements of the small group as it is likely to be found in a psychotherapeutic setting. Pines notes four group specific therapeutic factors: socialization, mirror phenomena, condenser phenomena and exchange.
